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The Ball

We parted company on Friday - my sister, dad and the hustler went back to Gerona so Nicci could show them the moving alleyways and mum could ruin the livings of many an ice cream maker, and I found my way to the Hilton for a spot of enjoying the good life at the company's expense.
I joined the band of cheerful employees for a spot of networking (generally spelt 'drinking'), and actually met up with "AMY"!
Turns out she had arrived in London on the flight from Singapore the same as me, and had travelled on to Venice, whereupon her luggage had not. A few days later her luggage did in fact reappear for her onwards trip to Barcelona, but at this point it seems her luggage had got a taste of the single life and went AWOL again.
I thought I had it bad - the last time I saw Amy she was boarding the flight back to Australia and still did not know where her bags were.

Highlights of The Ball for me would be Lenny Henry hosting and Richard Branson as guest speaker, and getting my clean pants back. Low points would be (apart from the obvious) being called on to the stage in front of 2000 people to receive a gift (a china bull) only moments after shovelling a forkful of oily pasta and twigs into my mouth.

Barcelona proper

Finally the whole family (luggage not being part of the family) met up in Barcelona and we spent a pleasant few days browsing the shops and markets and testing the sangria (me & Nicci) and drinking tea and wishing for a nice jam sandwich or slice of malt loaf (mum & dad).
Our hotel, which I had so carefully selected for being in the centre of everything, turned out to be a meeting point for people who needed to vomit loudly in the middle of the night outside the window of our cupboard. Luckily I gave up sleeping a long time ago, so it wasn't a huge issue, but I wouldn't recommend overlooking Las Ramblas in the future.

Had a very nice day trip to the Salvador Dali museum in Figueres, where dad declared that the paintings were almost surreal... And I think mum thought some of them were a little bit rude.

On the whole the parents were quite well behaved; although a word to the wise - don't play cards with the innocent-looking one they call "Mum" - it's a good job only champagne, and not real money changed hands.

Reunited

I was promised on Monday evening that my luggage would be on the first flight out of London on Tuesday morning and they would call me when it arrived in Barcelona. On Tuesday afternoon I called back to be told it would be on the first flight out of London on Wednesday after a problem in London.

On Wednesday morning I was told it was in the air as we spoke and would be in Barcelona at 10am. By lunch time I found out it would be leaving London later that day.

On Wednesday evening they proudly announced good news they had found my luggage and it would be sent out to me on Thursday morning. And on Thursday morning great news it was in Paris.

By Thursday afternoon the first call resulted in them waiting for a flight from Paris to Barcelona and the second call told me it was in London.

Finally on Thursday evening the couriers in Barcelona rang and said my luggage was in Barcelona and they would be delivering it that evening. Hoorah! I returned to the hotel who had a message saying it would arrive on Friday morning.

By now I wasn´t capable of being reasonable so Nicci called them and they hung up on her twice. I called back later and was told it would be delivered to me on Friday morning. So I rang Air France and their retarded desk and they said they had no idea why I thought it was coming on Friday, it was quite definitely coming Thursday evening and I must wait at the hotel.

So I rang the couriers at Barcelona airport again, who said it was coming on Friday, shortly followed by she didn´t know where it was, closely followed up with it was on its way.

Turns out it was - and finally me and my luggage were reunited 5 1/2 days after parting company.

Gerona

Have you seen the Harry Potter movies, in particular Hogwarts and the moving staircases? Well the idea was copied from Gerona´s streets and alleyways. You walk down La Rambla, the main street, and turn right at the shoe shop and find a lovely little bar. Later on you decide to return to the lovely little bar and turn right at the shoe shop but it is now a dead end alley with a restaurant at the bottom. You retrace your steps and turn right at the ice cream parlour instead, walk through someone´s courtyard, turn right left right and oh look there´s the bar. Come out of the bar and turn left and you´re back on La Rambla - which incidentally is straight, so that just isn´t possible.

The next day, and after much debate over sangria, we decided to test the theory that if you walk in a straight line in Gerona the streets will move around instead of you having to make turns and you will get to where you are going. We went to the shoe shop which was now not there, and neither was the alley.

Instead we chose to cross the bridge over the river (also a straight river, parallel to La Rambla) and walked away from the old town in search of the city for a spot of light shopping. After around 500m or so we took a small left turn and were back at the river, albeit further to the right.

It really is a very strange place.

My luggage, and its holiday plans

After four phone calls to the retarded luggage people yesterday we established that

a) my luggage had been identified

b) my luggage was not my luggage and had been sent to someone else

c) my luggage had been identified and why was I calling

d) good news - my luggage had been identified and would be sent to me.

Only worrying thing about this is I am moving from Gerona to Barcelona in a couple of hours and I can quite confidently predict that the luggage will turn up at this hotel shortly after we check out.

Lucky it´s not the middle of summer in Europe and I´m still in my jeans that I started the journey in, or things really would be unpleasant.

On a less stinky note, Gerona is really lovely - we have heaps of photos but haven´t found a means of getting them uploaded at this point. Hopefully the next hotel will have more sophisticated (ie not clockwork) internet access and even more hopefully my luggage will turn up with all my cables and chargers and clean pants and things.

In the spirit of all things diversionary, and to commemorate my plane going to Kuala Lumpur, I decided to fly to Paris and my luggage decided it would prefer a holiday without me. I guess I shouldn´t complain though - one man I met in London was trying to get from Australia to Moscow and he was being sent to Vienna, and a lady trying to get to Birmingham was also being sent to Paris with me. I even heard someone getting off the 12 hour flight from Singapore being told that to reach their final destination they would have to go via Singapore - I think that might have made me violent...
More problems ensued at the Air France check-in because I had been re-ticketed with an unknown person called Amy, and because she was not with me at boarding they wouldn´t let me on. Turns out it didn´t matter that I had no idea who she was, but I was very pleased they´d given me an invisible friend to keep me company.
Finally, after they´d got everyone on board and done the final head count, they agreed to let me on - so yes, that´s me, the person that everyone else thought had made the plane late. However my new special friend never did materialise so they just scribbled her off my ticket - very advanced.
It was around this time that we established that my luggage had not made it from Qantas to Air France, and no amount of asking them to hold the plane/phone Qantas would help; they advised me to wait til I got to Barcelona to complain. On the plus side there was some luggage on board that belonged to a man that they would not let board, due to Qantas messing up his ticketing (perhaps because he didn´t have an invisible friend?) - but they wouldn´t let me borrow his clothes and insisted on finding his luggage and getting it off the plane - bizarre, but he was the actual reason for the delay fellow travellers.
All this led to me arriving 11 hours late to Gerona where my very patient sister had been waiting at the train station for me. Unfortunately when I borrowed a text message off a very kind spanish girl to let Nicci know my ETA, I never specified where we would actually meet - so very patient Nicci waited at the train station, while I walked right past where she was sitting and made my own way to the hotel.
As for the saga of the "retarded luggage" (I´m quoting Air France) - I spoke to them this morning and it has been identified. They didn´t tell me where it is, but we know for sure it is not in Barcelona. But I am very pleased it has been identified.

Singapore

So half way there in one respect, and nowhere near from the point of view that I am in Singapore and my plane is in Kuala Lumpur. A tad inconvenient and am now considering changing the name of my blog to watchoutsingapore. They're blaming the diversion on bad weather - I actually thought the lightning looked quite pretty when we flew in through it.

No-one knows how they're going to get a plane load of people heading for London to London, and this also means I will miss my connection to Spain - leaving my non-spanish-speaking international-panicker sister sitting in the airport bar until I finally turn up and rescue her.

Just hope I get there before she slides off her bar stool.

On the way...

Now at the beginning of a very long journey. Technically, if you count the planes, I'm a quarter of the way there. Unfortunately in real money I've got a gazillion hours flying to go.
Was still packing when my lift arrived this morning - and then we got half way to the airport and had to go back for my money, tickets, passport (well it was for my travel insurance, but I had to get an AbFab quote in there).
Have a feeling of impending forgot-to-pack-something-essential-ness, although after the money, tickets, passport debacle it can't really get much worse. Watch this space for when I'm naked at the ball with only one shoe, or on a beach in my thermals.
On the plus side, courtesy of the Qantas Club I didn't have to queue with the commoners at check in and I'm now enjoying a nice glass of champers :-)

So I got out the new suitcase and, staring into its cavernous depths, decided I should have bought a smaller one, only to put in my shoes (I can't decide which ones to wear so I've had to bring a selection) - and now it's too full for anything else. This really does defy the laws of physics.
I've also tested the old adage "a watched suitcase never packs itself" (or similar) - and I have to say, yup completely true.
Had genuinely good packing intentions tonight, but based on the fact that everything I picked up to pack I will need in the morning, I have now decided the only way to go is leave it all til just before my lift arrives tomorrow and instead I shall have a little drink...

I really don't have enough hours left. I've got to get the house ready for the mother-in-law's arrival, bearing in mind making beds one handed is virtually impossible. I also need to leave comprehensive instructions due to everything in this house being on the verge of breaking down and therefore requiring special attention before operation - ie. before turning on dishwasher please unplug all other appliances in the house or something will explode...
And have I mentioned packing?
Well I don't even know what I'm going to wear to the ball yet, let alone the rest of the week - anyone know what the weather's like over there?

Just back from 'working' all weekend. The company do expect a lot from me - free flights to the Gold Coast, champagne reception followed by the ball, hotel paid for and then this morning shopping in Surfers Paradise. I don't know why I put up with it really.
However the point is all this working has seriously interfered in my not doing any packing, and so now I've got to unpack all this weekend's gear, wash everything including work clothes for tomorrow and then the real not packing can begin in earnest.

Packing... or the lack of it

Getting really very excited about this holiday. Not sure if it's because it's been such a long time since I've had a decent break (and I'm not including my last holiday in the decent category), or because I'm just not going to be here for a while in this pile of builders rubble, but with all the time spent being excited I've completely overlooked counting down - and therefore being aware of - the time left to pack. Which leads to suddenly being faced with the reality that I have to work every day for the next 2 weeks and then somehow be at the airport, preferably with a suitcase and even more preferably with things stuffed in it.

All this I am sure is in stark contrast to others in our raiding party (you know who you are mum) who will have had the case out on the bed the day meeting in Barcelona was suggested, and living in a nearly-packed state for quite some time now.